Simon Bookish

And so we find ourselves on a luxury yacht, or a cruise liner, floating out in a sunny bay close to an island that's so bright it looks like plastic, with people slowly swimming around the island in their thousands. The water seems to glow. We feel happy. But something isn't quite right. The view looks wrong. It's almost like a film set, or a mural - we're not sure that things are quite as they seem. This sea captain looks a little like an actor. The ground is moving beneath our feet, but not in the rhythm of the sea, it's strange and unrealistic. Suddenly we're shepherded into an enclosed space and everything is ripping apart at the seams... the comfort zone of our perceptions is coming undone. Is this a simulation of some kind? The walls come crashing in. It's not the deck of a ship at all, but the inside of a log cabin, and something outside is making everyone very nervous. You demand to know what's going on.

Simon Bookish draws these constantly unravelling scenarios in crisp, clear, well-enunciated English. Behind him, the laptop-powered backing track ebbs and flows, sliding between burbling amniotic flushes and busy, frantic synth glitching. Bookish fixes members of the audience with his eyes, flashing a white smile as he describes yet another new place that we find ourselves in: talking to George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld about ducks in the park, perhaps. His evocative words draw surreal and funny places around us. I think of Bowie and Baudrillard, Burroughs and Byrne (and not just because they alliterate). This spoken word journey isn't a finished thing, neatly tied up and delivered, but a jumping off point into another world, teeming with imagery and ideas.

It's an utterly absorbing show, and hardly anyone says a word or moves an inch for the duration the performance - maybe because there really isn't much out there that's anything like this, and (sometimes) people recognise creative brilliance when they see it. Simon Bookish's performances are infrequent, always highly anticipated and often packed to the rafters - if you should hear of one happening soon, make sure you get there early.